Consume less produce more: update to Pyramid of capitalist system (1911)

During the residency the watch I had the opportunity to spend a day in the former GDR watchtower on the Schlesischer Busch, which has been in the hands of the public and art associations since the reunification of Germany.

The tower has three floors, on the very ground floor there is a dark brick room without a window, intended for prisoners. It is about a meter square and about two people can sit on the brick platform. Then you go up the stairs to an office with several workers with a telephone and on the top floor there is an observation room. There is a spotlight on the roof. Everyone is armed and ready.

I spent some time in the observation room, since it was the warmest there on this fresh day. I just carefully peeked outside (apparently I was afraid of a counterattack), I brought the archives from the ground floor, made notes and read the newspaper that I found at the bus stop. I live in the so-called "Zeitungsviertel" in Berlin, where the publishing house Axel Springer, DPA, BDZV, Bundesdruckerei, or the newspaper TAZ are located and I often find several fresh Axel Springer prints at the bus stop.

For the one-day exhibition I prepared an adaptation of the pyramid of the capitalist system. It is an archive of newspaper clippings from the period September - October 2025, the graphs used in the installation are from the period May - August 2025, which I did not use in the work No more peace new.

In the installation I also used excerpts from the book by Clara Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way for Fascism, which points to the policies of European governments after the First World War to tame unions, introduce austerity measures in order to break up labor movements and socialist movements.

In the book you may find countless quotes from economists Alberto De Stefani, Maffeo Pantaleoni, Umberto Ricci, which I used in the "mechanics" of the installation on the gears.

cardboard, gouache color, newspaper, wire, foam, water gun toy, slime hand toy, wine glasses toy
various size
2025

for The Watch
at Flutgraben, Berlin

We need to speak plainly: a finance based on criteria of persecution of capital is a mad finance … instead of impeding the amortization of capital by pressing on savings that can be reinvested and that have been contended from the state to private economic action, it is better to press on consumption and this in the true and definitive interest of the disadvantaged populations (De Stefani 1926, Vie maestre. Commenti sulla finanza del 1926; 12)

When there is a government that gives out subsidies to the unemployed, the temptation is born to become unemployed, to take the subsidy, to work less and produce less.(Ricci, Dal protezionismo al sindacalismo, 1926; 22)

It is disgusting to witness the masses of workers that are drunk in all our cities…The notable increase of wages was not accompanied by greater civilisation so that the worker and his spouse live like pigs (porci) in their homes in order to waste the greatest part of their income in wine at the tavern (Pantaleoni, Bolcevismo Italiano, 1922)